Purple Haze

Walking through the halls of Saturday night’s Purple magazine party at Milk Studios Los Angeles, it was hard not to get the impression that everybody was somebody. At a minimum, they dressed the part. And with good reason, according to actor Paz de la Huerta. “I feel like Olivier doesn’t follow trends. He doesn’t follow people everybody already knows about. He picks out real artists—the rare gems and diamonds,” she told Style.com. In the current issue, which features cover girl Miranda Kerr (well, OK, everybody already knows her), those gems include fashion designer J.W. Anderson and the Bronx-born artist Steve DiBenedetto.

Purple founder Olivier Zahm spent the night jumping from one downtown notable to the next. In between air-kisses for the likes of Pom Klementieff and Chloë Sevigny, he paused long enough to relay his thoughts on the current Zeitgeist. “It’s the Instagram decade,” he said. “And, in a way, people don’t need magazines because of it. But what’s interesting is that this permanent connection is also transitory and amnesia-inducing, so you lose the sense of time, which turns magazines into record-keepers. That’s why I only do biannual issues. I would be lost in the moment doing monthly ones.” MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch was among the revelers. “I’ve followed the magazine since the beginning,” Deitch said. “Purple doesn’t isolate art as a separate discipline. The magazine successfully folds it into design, and, of course, sex.”